Groups Sign Funding Deal to Increase Competitiveness for Small Holder Farmers in East Africa

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) has entered into a partnership with KCB Group to facilitate the implementation of a platform that enables smallholder farmers across the East African region access credit and training.

With a 15.5 million dollar (USD) grant from the MasterCard Foundation, AGRA is implementing a project called FISFAP (Financial Inclusion for Smallholder Farmers in Africa Project) where farmers in Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania will be getting access to improved financial and non-financial services using digital channels to improve efficiency and reduce risk associated with financial transactions.

The farmers will access the services through a mobile based technology dubbed KCB Mobigro, a banking system that enables them to access credit while deliberately linking them to other players across the agricultural value chains from inputs to markets thereby boosting their creditworthiness.

The partnership will see KCB develop and implement value chain finance solutions where dairy and maize farmers will get access to services such as savings, insurance and credit for input and storage of their produce using their mobile phones and existing relationships with buyers and agro dealers.

Within 3 years, KCB hopes to have reached 5 million farmers with savings, insurance or credit services to be delivered through its proprietary agricultural ecosystem platform.

”Financing continues to be one of the biggest hurdles to the realization of an African economic transformation through agriculture. As AGRA, we are committed to playing our part in de-risking agriculture through innovative approaches like FISFAP”, said AGRA President, Dr. Agnes Kalibata during the signing ceremony in Nairobi.